


Thank god for small favors in high doses

by mrs_laugh_track



Category: Professional Wrestling
Genre: Gen, Kayfabe Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 23:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11069673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_laugh_track/pseuds/mrs_laugh_track
Summary: After the Takeover: Chicago DIY Incident Johnny's buddy Chuck comes to visit him in the hospital. Includes various scenes of Chuck Taylor attempting to introspect about his feelings on various subjects.





	Thank god for small favors in high doses

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal gratitude to Belmanoir for wrangling my punctuation and my plot points. Thanks to Veroniques for letting me steal two jokes. Thanks to Mona for enabling #dustinquest17.
> 
> Title from High Doses 2 by The Mountain Goats

When Chuck heard what happened, he was halfway between Boston and Philly. Certain people like to give him a hard time about talking on the phone while driving, but he’d bet that all those same people would’ve complained if he’d missed Candice’s call, so in their faces. 

“How fast can you get to Chicago?”

“Hi Corndawg, how are you, I’m fine, 15 hours if I go nonstop.”

“There aren’t any flights and I can’t get out there. Listen. Johnny’s hurt. I think it might be bad. I talked to the hospital. I had to talk to four different people. I had to send them a scan of my ID to prove I’m his _wife_. What if we hadn’t been married? They put me on the phone and I could hear him breathing, but he wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t talk to _me_. It was Tommaso. Chuck, Tommaso did this to him. I need you to go, nobody else I’ve called can get there and I just, I don’t think I can drive like this. Someone needs to go there in person. I need someone to see him. I need him to see somebody.”

“Hey hey homegirl, slow down. Are you by yourself?”

“Joey’s here.”

And Chuck can’t imagine a world in which _Joey Ryan_ functions as some kind of emotional support system, but it means she’s probably less likely to accidentally burn down the house setting Tommaso’s stuff on fire. 

He likes to think he’s a decent friend. Yeah, he’s never actually put in that good word for Swampy at PWG like he promised, but chances are the California heat would dry him up anyway, so in the long run he’s doing him a favor. Also he keeps forgetting. But overall Chuck considers himself to be a pretty good friend, he just isn’t usually a “visit you in the hospital” type of good friend. Much less a “drive 15 hours to visit you in the hospital” type of friend. It shouldn’t sting that apparently Candice called a bunch of other people first. 

He should say no. It’s not like John Boy would be all by his lonesome. “We are NXT,” right? Surely Johnny’s made a lot of friends with good work ethics and TV-ready bodies who can come sit with him. 

It’s a long-ass drive to Chicago. Could Tommaso not wait until they were somewhere slightly more convenient to lose himself or find himself or whatever. 

He really should say no, but he’s already said yes. 

***

After about an hour down Interstate 90 he figures he should let people know that he knows. Twitter’s always good for that. Gotta find something that strikes the right tone of I love and support my friend, but I’m not gonna be cheesy or cliché about it.

_Wait did Ciampa turn on John Boy I have like 50 tweet drafts saved about their sexual chemistry what am I supposed to do now_

That isn’t true about his drafts. Well, he has some tweets about that. Mostly his drafts are just shit. Generic stuff, middle-of-the-road wordplay, a few truly painful tweets about how special and beautiful wrestling is typed from an alternate universe where he’s as much of a douchebag as Ricochet. 

Had they been banging? He always kind of assumed they were. All of them getting down on ugly Disney-print sheets, Candice bringing them fresh-baked cookies to keep up their bang strength. Yeah okay, he’s thought about her in just a little apron with like her butt out and stuff. All his friends are hot, so sue him. It’s like everyone is having some kind of sex party without him. God, if it turns out that Rocky and Trent are dogging he’s gonna fucking lose it. 

(He made out with Johnny once after a show. That’s what tag team victories do to people, okay? He knows all about it.)

It’s worse if they were banging, right? What Tommaso did. Well, it’s pretty fucking bad either way — understatement of the year — but definitely it would be worse if Johnny was also hitting that. 

***

About two hours later he remembers that Orange Cassidy is asleep in the back seat. “Hey! Hey Orange Cassidy! Wake up buddy!” This has no noticeable effect. Neither does throwing a roll of Oreos at his head. Chuck pulls the car into a 7-11 parking lot. Orange tips down his sunglasses. “Do we have a match?” 

“No dude, we had our match. I gotta go to Chicago.” Orange pushes his sunglasses back up. “I’ve got a bottle of whisky in the trunk, if I can leave you in this parking lot it’s yours.” Orange shrugs. 

***

As he picks through a gas-station food mart in upstate New York he wonders what a good gift is for a guy who has just gotten his heart ripped out through his ass. Beef jerky? _The National Enquirer_? He browses the candy aisle before giving up. For all he knows, those nerds have a special signature candy for movie nights. Wouldn’t want to set off any kind of trauma reaction. 

He buys himself some of the most suspicious-looking nachos he’s ever seen. His brain knows better, but emotionally they seem unavoidable.

He sits in his car trying not to get gross nacho-grease fingerprints all over his phone. He should watch the match, right? Would that be the responsible thing to do? 

No the responsible thing to do would be to keep driving. He already knows enough. They lost the match and Tommaso went all Psycho Killer and now Johnny is in the hospital. 

He watches the match and wishes he hadn’t.

Anger like that, like what happened to Tommaso — he doesn’t really understand it. He knows what losses can do. The exhaustion he sees in Tommaso’s face, that he recognizes — that he knows down to his bones. Loss after loss after loss after loss. It’s so easy to want to blame anything and everything within arm’s reach. Anything to soften blaming yourself. He can’t pretend that need has never led him to slamdunk a good thing in his life into the trash. He can’t even say that it’s never caused him to do it to Johnny. But it was never like this — at least he hopes it wasn’t. 

His stomach twists in embarrassment at the thought of people seeing him that out of control. He doesn’t mind violence. Ask anyone, he’s practically a deathmatch guy now. He’s not stuck on any dumb rules about not poking people in the eye. He doesn’t exactly have a history of trustworthiness, or kindness, or “not trying to deliberately beat a guy to the point he can no longer fund his orphanage”-ness. But he can’t really think a time when he was so caught up that he couldn’t do what he needed to do with a beautiful smile on his face. Probably that makes him a some kind of piece of shit. Just a different kind of piece of shit than Tommaso. 

Fuck, is that his problem? Or at least, one of his problems. Is that part of the whole hey why is that goofball Chuck Taylor lagging way behind his peers problem? Does he need to get angrier? Would a rampaging, fuck-shit-up-and-take-no-prisoners Chuck Taylor have had the world at his feet by now?. 

He finishes the remains of the nachos he’s been picking at, rolls down the window, and drops the trash directly onto the ground. 

***

He wishes this drive didn’t take him through Cleveland. It feels wrong that it’s just a regular sunny morning with people going about their day, Hadn’t they heard what happened to their favorite son? 

If he turned onto the 71, he could be in Murray in only an hour or so more than it will take to get to Chicago from here. He could just go home and never come back if he wanted to. There’s nothing stopping him. He spends a lot of time imagining that. _People asking whatever happened to Chuck Taylor? Remember Chuckie T, he threw a pretty nice dropkick. Who was the guy that did the grenade, I loved that?_ He’s a local celebrity with a college degree, setting up a new life would be so easy. 

He stops to buy some flowers. Browses through a bunch of shitty cards before giving up on them. Gets back in the car and tries to find a radio station that will play him something with steel guitar.

***

He reaches Chicago around 2 in the afternoon. He yells “Hey you garbage fake-pizza town, I’m here” to no one.

***

He is aware there’s nothing more annoying than when people say “I hate hospitals”. Like wow no shit, as opposed to all the people who love hospitals. But sitting here waiting to be let in to visit Johnny all he can think is _shit do I hate hospitals_. Even snarling at some dumb little kid in the waiting room didn’t make him feel any better. The kid didn’t even cry, was he losing his touch? No, he consoled himself, the kid was probably too distracted by whatever reason he was actually here. Probably it’s scarier than Chuck. 

Candice had been able to put him on a visitor list. She’d been sending him maps, updates, notes about exactly which floor to go to and who to talk to. Nobody channels pure panic into activity better than Candice LeRae. He hopes Joey isn’t letting her try to start any projects. 

***

There he is, Johnny Sports-Entertainment, all heart, the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas, the whole shebang. He looks very beat up, but more than that he just looks really fucking sad. Probably he’s barely even a third of the shebang at the moment.

Chuck wishes the last text he’d sent Johnny hadn’t been a dick joke. He wishes he wasn’t such a piece-of-shit wrestler and could be on the same stupid TV-adjacent show as Johnny and keep stuff like this from happening. 

“I brought you some flowers. Uh, they were like two dollars. I stuck a little bottle of booze in it, one of those like mini-fridge bottles. You don’t drink, but I figure you could use it to bribe a nurse or something.” 

No reaction from Johnny. 

He needs something else to say, and fast.

“Well, on the bright side, your social media presence is going to be way less annoying from now on.”

That probably shouldn’t have been it. 

“Look, do you need me to kill him? I shot a deer once when I was 12, it can’t be that much harder.”

Something terrible passes over Johnny’s face. 

“Okay, no murder, got it. Hunting sucks anyway.”

He sits there for a long time. Johnny doesn’t say anything. Chuck tries not to say anything either. He doesn’t always manage. Maybe that’s okay. 

Eventually someone tells him it’s time to leave. 

The thing is, just because Johnny isn’t talking doesn’t mean there isn’t anything he needs to hear. He stands up and puts a hand on the edge of the little railing on Johnny’s bed. 

“Hey. I love you. No caveats, no fucking around. You should know that you’re worth driving 15 hours for. Just like, as a person. Anyone who doesn’t get that… Anyone who would throw that away for anything… You know? You’re so good. You’re such a good partner.”

Every word that comes out of his mouth feels like the exactly wrong thing to say. Chuck tries to breathe and hopes at least one or two of them weren’t. 

***

His phone buzzes. It’s a text from Trent who is asking if he’s okay. 

_nothing happened to me man_

_You’ve been secretly in love with John for like a decade just checking in_

Why is Trent so stupid just when Chuck needs him to be at his least stupid? Chuck sends him a _fuck you_ , and gets an immediate _fuck you_ back from halfway around the world. Somehow his heart feels a little lighter.

***

It might not have been the right thing to say, but it was true about John Boy being a good partner. Honestly, he’s just about the easiest motherfucker in the universe to tag with, that’s not even a question. But he’s also kind of a nightmare. It’s so hard to feel like he sees you, that he’s not looking past you. He tends to exist on his own little Planet Johnny. That was true when they first met and Johnny was some shithead kid with a terrible haircut, and it’s remained true years of terrible haircuts later. 

Chuck puts himself in Tommaso’s boots. Standing there with Johnny at the end, the whole building coming apart for them, loving them. He’s must be getting soft in his old age because he can’t imagine that feeling like a loss anymore. 

He thinks about blowing the big one, his first shot at the PWG belt after what felt like roughly one thousand years working there. Tries to feel that loss. Thinks about passing out in Zack’s horrible snake limbs, about Marty and his bullshit. It fucking sucks. Which is good because for a second he’d been worried that he couldn’t feel losing anymore. What would he do with all the time he spent everyday feeling like he’s losing hard, he’d have to rearrange his whole schedule. Then he thinks about after the match, Trent chasing the Lead Turds Of The New School away. The feeling of being helped up off the mat.

He gets on Twitter. Tries to just type without thinking. Get what he has to say out faster than he can notice how stupid it sounds. 

_John I would never turn my back on you I just want you to know that. @Johnnygargano_

He shoves his phone into his pocket before he can delete the tweet. Because you know what, fuck it, he wouldn’t. He’s never gonna get the chance to team with Johnny again, so it means fuck-all for him to say so. But it’s true, so he’s gonna say it.

He needs to sleep for about a day. It’s okay. He’s got people in Chicago he can crash with.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry friends Rocky and Trent are FOR SURE dogging in this universe. 
> 
> This fic is brought to you by:
> 
> 1\. Chuck tweeting a very jokey tweet and then 24 hours later a kind of sincere one about the situation
> 
> 2\. That story Johnny told on his Kevin Steen Show about how Chuck visited him in the hospital in a fanfiction, but not in real life and how funny I thought it would be to somehow turn Chuck visits Johnny in the hospital into a running theme from that.
> 
> 3\. Me constantly thinking about Chuck's current transcendent babyface PWG run and how that would sort of be emotionally in a fictionalized context for such a lifetime bad dude.


End file.
